The key issue here this week is immigration. Actually, it’s not, it’s the criminal President and his criminal war, but the news channels don’t want to tell us about that any more. On Monday there was a national protest known as “the day without immigrants”, when immigrants both legal and illegal showed solidarity for one another and took the day off work, just to show everybody how much America depends on them. This is a country founded by immigrants, they cry, and they have a damn valid point. As a recent immigrant myself I’m with them all the way.

But the immigration debate is a minefield. In Britain, tabloid headlines rarely distinguish between “asylum seekers”, “economic migrants” and “illegal immigrants”. The consequence is that the public lumps them all in together, and treats them just the same. The same arguments people use in the UK are being used by people here, namely “they are coming over here and taking our jobs” and complaining that with them here, wages will be forced down because they will work for much less than a local. And so they become victimised, and scapegoats.

Hang on a minute, though – where are all the jobs really going? Big corporations are outsourcing their industries abroad, to Asia and elsewhere, because they can pay lower wages there. Are we then to blame the Chinese and the Indians for that? Why don’t we blame the corporations? We seem to be quick to pick on the worker, to pick on the poor sods who bust their bottoms all day and night for a pittance, just because it is a better life than what they left behind. Why are people so quick to attack them? They come to America because they have to – it’s supposed to be the richest country, and everyone wants to take part in the American Dream. Oh yeah, remember that?

And then there is the whole language debate. “They come over here from Mexico, they don’t even want to learn English!” People talk of forcing everyone to learn English, as if in a society dominated by English-language media they wouldn’t anyway. And was Spanish not spoken in California way before English? and the Native American languages before that? It is quite ridiculous that California can support the “English First” policy (whereby they make English the sole official language, thus ‘protecting’ it), when almost all its major cities have Spanish names (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, San Diego – hardly Anglo-Saxon). I’d say that, truthfully, the English-speakers were the immigrants, wouldn’t you?

I didn’t take the day off, though (it being my first day on the new job proper), though I did stay away from the shops. The immigration debate is big and sticky, and all sides have real concerns (even the language concerns have some validity). But I think it must be remembered that people come here because there are opportunities denied to them at home, it’s that simple.